Mediaite’s Noah Rothman rips MSNBC for sending Martin Bashir to London to cover Margaret Thatcher’s funeral.
It was, however, soon revealed that Bashir was “on assignment,” but few could have been aware of how inappropriate that assignment would be. Bashir, who had spent the day of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s death on virtually every program on his network attacking her legacy and accusing her of harboring racial animus, was sent to London as MSNBC’s envoy to cover her funeral.
I have nothing to add other than this is a textbook case study on what happens when you take someone who had been a straight news reporter and convert him to a POV analysis host only to re-convert him back to a straight news anchor for a special occasion. There’s lots of baggage that you now have to contend with and said anchor’s previous utterances will dog him and your network as you now try to play the story you are covering straight.
Filed under: MSNBC
